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Last week was the Moon Festival. People usually do BBQ and eat mooncakes, but that’s all. So, i tried one mooncake. The traditional one is filled with an entire egg yolk. However, one of my friend had tried it and it was quite bad.

I asked for the less sweet that the bakery had, and they gave me this. I recognized black sesame and almonds. The filling is too heavy, it stays in your mouth, a little bit like fruit jelly but less sweet. I’m not used to black sesame taste so it became quickly sickening. I asked the others what they thought about mooncakes, and they also don’t really enjoy it. Still, black sesame and almonds are a good match.

This one is from the brand Milkhouses.

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Why do i call it like that? Haha that’s quite simple, i put all my leftovers inside! I just tried to use green & yellow lemon, praline, almond powder and candied orange peels. I know that i didn’t follow the pastry technics and it might look awful for those who know how to bake, but since i don’t know any technic and still that’s my familly favorite between the 5 cakes i baked, i don’t really care. Well, here is the recipe of my Rubbish Muffin!What i like (and also dislike) about american cakes, it is that you can nearly put anything inside and mix, and you’ll have something edible. Just like cupcakes and muffins, you use the same pastry as you base, and everything is alright. However, that’s often quite heavy and still the same pastry, so it would be kind of boring to always bake muffins or cupcakes or donoughts (only mix, not even a pastry technic… except for decoration).

Pour your cottage cheese in a bowl, add the green lemon zests, the yellow one juice & a half of the green one, sea salt. Then add sugar, vanilla sugar, flour, eggs, oil and the yeast, in this order and mix between each. Add your candied orange peels, leave some for decoration. Butter your mold (just a wee bit, i didn’t do it but it was ok if you use a knife). Put some almond powder at the bottom (not really uselful but well, it was a way to use it, 2/3 of your preparation, some praline, and cover the last 1/3 with your preparation. Put one candied orange peel on the top. Or you can just mix your praline with your almond powder and your preparation, but it’ll be a way heavier.Preheat your oven to 180°C and cook it for about 25/30mn.

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Pierre Hermé…I don’t know what to think about him. He’s worldwide reknowned and the master that made people interested in pastries again. Sure. However, his pastries are not always that great, and neither are his chocolates…

I have already been to his shop for Christmas, to buy a “Bûche Mont-Blanc à ma façon”, and we were quite disappointed, but mainly because we paid the wrong price (or more because they made a mistake in the cakes and we got one smaller). So since then i had quite a negative image of his pastry shop, because it screw up my Christmas day.

However, since Laurent Duchêne, a pastry MOF (MOF stands for Meilleur Ouvrier de France= Best French Craftsman, a prize in each craft that happen every year. Only one person (by craft) receive the price each year, for all his life. This prize is reknown by everyone, both everyday-people and craftsmen and means that the holder of the prize masters his art), was closed, my parents went to Pierre Hermé to buy cakes and chocolates. They chose:

This cake…has become my top 2 after the religieuse au café! It is hard to digest, i recognize (that is a first for me to say), but maybe that’s because we eat a 8 people cake with 3 people only… I have to try the same one but with coffee taste. I think the pastry was with almonds, but what i really enjoyed were the different textures of the cake. You had the mousse, the ganache that was like chestnut purée but with vanilla taste and a thin layer of white chocolate mousse that covered the top. The vanilla taste was explosing in my mouth. He used different kinds of vanilla to have this taste. Really, this one was worth coming back.

This one was great, but not well-balanced. We hardly felt the red berries because the lemon was a way too strong. It was like eating a lemon pie, so the name and the appearances were totally tricky. However, the lemon taste was really great in itself. It’s just that it was a little useless to put berries inside if we can’t feel them.Ah, and i think that the meringues were too sweet so i didn’t really enjoy eating them, but they were really beautifully made and the inside was well-made, without any bubble of air. (Yeah, i know, i’m hard to satisfy…)

The chocolates. I don’t have a picture of them, but they were a way too sweet and even salted? They didn’t feel like real and strong chocolate. Last time we took some, it was also the same. So i don’t recommand to go there for the chocolates. Out of the 3 cakes, one was really worth, the two remaining are ok, but i prefer those of Pain de sucre of Carl Marletti.

I told my parents to go to Des gâteaux & du Pain to buy bread for the dinner, and they couldn’t resist to buy this Kougelhof (Kouglof). This is a special bread from Alsace, a region in France that has a border with Germany. They have a lot of typical food and i’d like to try them all. For example, the recipe of the Chinois that you can find on my blog is also from this region. They have a strong identity, and i really like regions like that, Brittany is like this too.

Well, i wake up this morning to take a picture of this Kougelhof, but as you can see, someone didn’t wait for me to taste it. ;p. I had never tried any before that i can remember. This is a bum with almonds, dried grapes and puffy cream. As for my, the bum was great, not too dry (i always choke with bum and rice and couscous because i eat too quickly. I can’t help it, if it’s good, i eat quickly so that i can be the first one to serve myself again and i can have more *=* that’s my strategy!). However, there were not enough grapes and almonds in the bum and i barely felt the puffy cream that was in the middle. So i was a little disappointed. But i’m a total stranger to Kougelhof so i don’t know if there should have more cream or dried fruits…So i still prefer their croissants & pains au chocolat.

Today i bought some croissants and other viennoiseries to celebrate my last internship day. I decided to go to one of the best Paris bakeries concerning croissants, to try and test if this shop was as great as said. So here is my review about Des gateaux et du Pain…

A quite big shop as opposed to pastryshop, all in black (something that doesn’t change at least…). The saleman was wearing a cooker clothe, which is quite fun when you see the shop (really high class, like a jewelry shop, but with bread and viennoiseries instead of jewelry). The man was nice, and gave me a lot of napkins. It is more expensive than a normal bakery (of course I want to say), but since the shop and the place is great, it seems normal.

Croissants

Definitely the best I’ve ever had, crispy on the outside, tender on the inside. Light, not too fat but with the taste of butter… Gosh, amazing. And they’re even better when you directly crunch them without cutting them before.

Pain au chocolat

The paste is the same, and the chocolate is real chocolate, not the little thing that you usually find in your pain au chocolat. I’m fond of this one. My favorite.

Brioche

I couldn’t try it unfortunately, so I don’t know how it is. But it looks great, right?

Chausson aux pommes = flaky pastry filled with apple compote

This one was ok. I didn’t really enjoy it because I don’t like cinnamon, and there’re (nearly) always cinnamon in chaussons aux pommes. However, the compote was homemade and quite good. I have only tried chaussons once or twice, and I wanted to try the one from La patisserie des rêves since I saw a great review about it, but as I don’t like cinnamon, I think I’m going to cancel my little trip.

Pain aux raisins

According to Jojo, it was not really good, there weren’t enough grapes and so goes for the cream.

Madeleines

They were really good. What I preferred is that they used honey so that it would not spoil the taste of the Madeleine butter, as it’s the case with lemon madeleines (but that’s my point of view). And was I really liked about those is that the top was still a little soft and liquid, as if it had not finished baking, that made the Madeleine less dry and really melting in the mouth. (As you can see, they had some problems with the trip…)

Almonds & Grapes Bread

Really good! In fact, it was soo good that we only eat this bread as dinner! I loved the grapes that soften the bread and their sweetness with the crispy of the almonds.

Go there for the croissant and Pain au chocolat, Madeleine and bread, there really are as great as said. However, don’t expect the same thing from all viennoiseries. I’ll try to go there again because..gosh…can’t forget the taste…